The temperature drop this weekend. September is at its close. The air is crisp, while for some reason there are these random air horn noises coming from beyond my backyard. I'm taking it as a call to action. We as a people must put assigned our tank tops and our sandals, and unearthed the chunky cable nets and fuzzy flannels in the back of our closets. Because fall is officially upon us.
It is a time for picking apples and pumpkins and putting Thanksgiving and Christmas decorations out entirely too early, and I am here for it. As I stand in this so called garden of mine, which is not really a garden, I feel like an architect surveying a lot before breaking ground. I'm looking out onto this barren plot of mulch. I am eager to draw up a blueprint for fall, but first I need a better sense of what's possible. Will
I grow Brussels sprouts or beats, cabbages or lettuce? And which of these beautiful creatures will I accidentally over water? Only time will tell, my friends. But as I stand here with my bag of seeds and my trusty spade, I'm ready for whatever fall brings, but mostly pumpkin pie. Hey there, I'm Mongas Articular, co host of Part Time Genius, one of the founders of Mental Flaws, and this is Humans Growing Stuff, a collaboration from my Heart Radio and
your friends at Miracle Grow. My goal is to make this the most human show about plants you'll ever listen to, and along the way, we'll share relatable experiences, inspiring stories, tips and tricks to nurture your plants, and just enough
science to make you sound like an x Burt. In today's episode, with summer's harvest coming to a close, will share new gardening opportunities that await in the fall, because there's plenty you can do over the course of the next few months that don't involve squashes or even warty gourd's. But also, can you grow pumpkins for Halloween if you're quick enough. I have no idea, but I do know there's a cornucopia of plants that you can grow and harvest and see pop up again in the spring without
having to replant. Chapter two, Legends of the Fall Garden. When I think of fall, the first thing that comes to mind our pumpkins. Spice lattes and don't at me because I know they're basic. But ps l's as they're known in my house, are also delicious. But the truth is, I wish I could be as excited about fall gardening as I am about fall ben ridges. So I called up my friend Jade to share the hottest fall planting trends everything I should know about so I can apply
my PSL vibes to my growing too. Hey everyone, I'm Jade, the black plant chicken plant care consultant. I think this fall the pumpkin spice plants are latte plant would be the pothos. That is one plant that it grows anywhere, and it's beautiful and it even will grow for you, possibly slowly, but it will grow um over the fall,
and it's just a beautiful plant to watch. Is very low maintenance, So for those of us who have plans for traveling, um, this is one plant that you won't have to worry about if you are not home for a long period of time. But what about fiddily figs? Those are super trendy right now, right They're trendy for a person who is not afraid of them, so they're
great to look at. But some people are really afraid of fiddly figs. I have been given the name of the fiddlely fig tree Guru because I teach a workshop on it. Most of my consultations are about the fiddlely big They are my favorite plants. Um But the snake plant is a great plant to grow. I mean it can grow in almost any condition. But over the fall, a lot of people are just really focused on their plants that they've gotten over a summer and spring to
really really survived throughout. Because there's so many novice plant parents out there, they're just kind of like, I don't know what to do. Right after I chat with Jade, my producer Molly, and I started talking about the whole ridiculousness of this pumpkin spice season, and then we started debating, if you start now, can you grow a tiny pumpkin in time for Halloween? Not a huge one, but like
a little decorative one. So I looked at up and it made me laugh how little I know about because of course you can't, Like a month and a half isn't enough time to grow a pumpkin. I mean, you have those farmers in Alaska who grow two thousand pound pumpkins, and that did not start in September. And now for a mindful meditation moment in the garden. Today's practice is
going to help us focus on growing pumpkins. So take a seed in the dirt, feel the weight of the pumpkin seeds in your hand, feel their smooth flatness with your fingers, and take a deep breath in through your nose and out through your mouth. You can keep your eyes open or close, whatever works for you. No judgment here, and now tell yourself this monthra out loud or in your head. If I want to grow pumpkins in time for Halloween, I have to plant them in July one
more time. Now take those seeds and save them for next summer. Not must. I used to live in Atlanta, and my favorite thing to do was to walk to the farmers market every Sunday morning at Grant Park. It was a ritual. We'd put out a picnic blanket, hang with friends, and inevitably we'd come home with this gorgeous little bounty of fresh vegetables. And to be honest, there's nothing more fun than being inspired by fresh ingredients. But I've been curious about how things stay fresh year round.
How did the seasons change the soil and growth potential of various plants and vegetables, And how can we take advantage of what each season offers to maximize our chef skills In the middle of say, I don't know a blizzard, I'm hoping that my next guests can answer a lot of these questions. So I am so lucky to be here talking with Vivian Howard. Vivian hosts the incredible PBS show A Chef's Life and Somewhere South, which I'm now
obsessed with. She has several cookbooks and has this incredible story of leaving the fancy New York City restaurant scene and moving to start a farm to fork restaurant in Kinston, North Carolina. It's the celebrated chef and the farmer. I just read you were the first woman since Julia Child to win a Peabody for a cooking program, which just blew my mind. So, Vivian, thank you so much for being here. I love watching people come into your kitchen
and share the steep family stories and recipes. And I've got to say with the pickling episodes, the sour pickles and the beads, those are some of my favorite ones, just because it feels like something I and do with my family and and also with my friends. It feels like a communal activity. What should we what should we be pickling right now? Well? I think green tomatoes are a great ingredient right now if you happen to have a garden and you have tomatoes hanging there that are
not going to ripen. I think cabbage is, you know, one of the most unsung heroes of our kitchens and our gardens. I love pickling beats. I think they're a beautiful color. They have, you know, tremendous health benefits. It's almost easier to talk about what not to pickle. Well, actually that's good. But what shouldn't we pickle? Nothing that's soft? So, you know, red tomatoes that are ripe and juicy, don't
pickle those. Um Asparagus makes a terrible pickle. But you want to pickle something with a crunchy texture, you know. One of the things that we pickle in the restaurant are stems. Swiss shard stems, collared stems, something that you would often throw away if you've cooked the leaves, but the stems, you know, sliced into small pieces with a vinegar brine poured over them create you know, a crunchy condiment that would otherwise have been wasted. That's so incredible.
My mouth's watering here. And you talk about all these different things. As someone who's a novice at both gardening and cooking, how would you encourage someone to get started? Um? Well, I think with gardening there is a you know, a barrier to entry. But the positive thing is is that seeds cost very little. Putting a seed in the ground and hoping that it comes up is it's not a big commitment. And you know, as long as you get your soil ready and you make sure what you're planting
is the right time of year. I would always start with easy things like you know, radishes. You know, you can plant them and they pop up in a matter of days and so that's you know, kind of instant gratification. So in some ways, I think gardening is even more approachable than than cooking. That's amazing. You know. I have uh, several friends, many of them live in New York who, prior to COVID were using their oven as you know, a place to store their cosmetics. And when you know
they were in lockdown. They're like texting me like, how do I cook for myself? Where do I start? I want to make shrip scampy. I'm like, don't start with that. Uh, let's get some eggs. Let's learn how to scramble some eggs. That's that's all super helpful and and encouraging. So you've said that you started your show Chef's Life partially because
you're fixated on on documenting dyeing food traditions. Um, well, you know, I think when I was just getting started Chef and the Farmer, the book The Art of Fermentation by sand Or Cats was, you know, the thing that every chef was reading, you know, across the nation. And I walked outside my door one morning and there was this ziplock bag sitting on the front doorstep that had this like these dark green leaves floating in this like milky liquid. And I thought, oh my god, what is that.
My dog wouldn't even get near it. It smelled so bad. And I called my dad and he said, that's collar kraut vibe, and that's a gift. It's not a prank. My little geeky chef brain just blew up, because you know, I'm trying to learn about these ancient techniques from this book. And you know, these old folks down the road for me are making crowd with collards. You know that that really inspired me to to look deeper at the food traditions in eastern North Carolina, and and I felt this
urgency to tell people about it. I was watching an interview where you said, whatever season is next, is what you're most excited for? What what are you excited to cook most in in the fall? We love summer produce, right, but if you think about it, there's nothing green about summer. You know, you've got corn and summer squash and tomatoes. But I found myself at the end of summer really
salivating for you know, intensely green greens. And one of these dishes that I encouraged my friends who had to start using their ovens for other things other than cosmetic storage, was to, you know, buy some greens, chopped them up, salte them with a little bit of garlic, maybe add a little bit of chopped tomato, cook some pasta, Throw that in with some pasta, water, a little parmesan cheese, and maybe a little butter or olive oil, and you've
got something that you might actually eat in a restaurant. I'm still laughing about that. The cosmetics above that did you ever garden when you were in New York? Oh? No. I moved to New York to get as far away from anything eastern North Carolina or childhood related as I could. And um, it really took me coming back here and slowing down and and seeing the wisdom and the resourcefulness of the people that live here to appreciate that sort
of thing again. And now I'm like obsessed with my yard and all my house plants, and I'm I look at caring for those as a type of therapy. He talked about what your garden means to you or your house plants. About ten years ago, I started rescuing orchids from from you know, office buildings or friends would have an orchid whose spike had, you know, died and they thought the whole plant was dead. And I'm like, oh my god, that cost you thirty dollars give me that thing.
And so I've started taking the orchids and putting them in my bathroom, and over the course of a year or two, I ended up with like thirty orchids that live in my bathroom and loved the steam from my shower. It's one of my greatest pleasures to see the orchids like produce a spike. Me and my kids get a lot of pleasure from moving the orchids around the house after they've bloomed. And this little piece of piece, if you will, that I share with myself in my bathroom,
I love that. Uh can can you tell me, you know, going back to farming a little bit, but like why is farm to table or farm to fork so important to you? And what's the biggest difference you noticed in the way you cook now versus the way you cooked when you were maybe in your career in New York City. You know, I love cooking from straight from the farm for a number of reasons. I think that having a connection to your food source really makes you value those
ingredients more. I also think that the quality is is better. It keeps me really nimble as a cook because you know, if I put a dish on the menu that it's all about care flex cabbage, and you know, my farmer says, you know, this is the last of that. Then I have to get creative with what to do next. And it's exciting. I love your use of the word nimbleness, not just for how you react, but also how the
farmers are are moving. And I saw it on that one episode where this gentleman was growing corn I think for moonshine and then all of a sudden started growing field peas. It didn't occur to me just how flexible like farmers are and how they're constantly experimenting, even in small ways. Yeah, and you know, another piece to that is that field peas and lagoons in general are they're very good for the soil, so they're replenishing nutrients in
the soil. So you may grow something like tomatoes or corn, which really takes a lot out of the soil, and then in order to get back to it, you plant something like field peas. If you're going to take away, you have to get back. And I think in that episode he was talking about perhaps growing corn and letting the peas grow around it, and then I just thought how inventive that that idea was, and that it would
never occur to me. Of course, there's a lot of practice of that, you know, planning mary golds around your your summer garden to prevent bugs from attacking your produce, there's all kinds of natural things you can do to make it more successful. Also am a big fan of bronze spinnel, which is a culinary herb that uh lives all year long and it adds a nice licorice note too, dishes and it's a surprising flavor to have. I'm a big fan of rosemary and sage and mint, which if
you plant them outside they come back every year. Um, you can also plant them inside. But I think if you're serious about cooking and serious about saving money, and serious about gaining confidence in the kitchen, like having a little arsenal of live herbs in your window sill is one of the things you can do that will make a dramatic difference in your cooking. But one of the things I love about what you do is that you're such a good storyteller. But I know that works its
way into your menus too. Do you have any ideas for Halloween dinner? Oh? Well, you know it's funny say that because we Chef and the Farmer's been closed since March, but we're opening our porch. One of the porch plates that we're trying to get ready to do is an oyster roast, which is something we do in the fall here live coals oysters in the shell that you know, open up with smoke and um, take on some of
that charred flavor. It looks so beautiful just see seeing it on on film, Like yeah, and it's like there's all these sensory experiences with it. You know, throwing the burlap sack over the oysters so they steam a little bit, makes this beautiful sound in this spectacle, and then everybody chucking oysters and adding whatever condiment they want. And you know, my kids just dip saltines and butter rather than you know, having the oysters. That sounds so fun. Vivian. It's it's
been such a pleasure of chatting with you. And I'm so excited to read your new cookbook. Do you mind telling everyone the name again and where they can get it? This will make it taste good? Is ten chapters of essentially condiments and then like ten to twelve ways to use it. Cooking with condiments, as many of us have learned through COVID, can really make simple food very exciting. And it comes out October twenty, but you can pre order it. You go to Vivian Howard dot com. Well,
I've loved the pages I've skimmed. I can't wait to get in the mail, and I'm so excited to have chatted with you. Thank you so much, Vivian, thank you, thank you. And now for another trip to poetry corner. This piece is called red Tomato, Green tomato Tomato tomato go Tomatoes that grow and grow. Red means right for picking, Green means ripe for pickling. But what happens when you don't grow? High weep then order chicken? Thank you. I know what you're thinking, mango. It's about to get real
cold soon. Some of my beautiful plants are not meant to live that frost life. And I hear you. Plants are fragile and they're going through a lot of changes. So I'm treating them like my kid getting into second grade, with a lot of entering and encouragement and the acknowledgement that we're going to make a lot of mistakes. Since we know I don't have the answers for you, I've also asked Jay to share her top five tips for
transplanting some of those more delicate plants indoors. Today, I'm going to talk to you about my five tips for transitioning your outdoor plant inside for the fall. Tip number one, plan weeks before the temperature drops and established where in your home this plant will live, and you want to make sure that in your home you're not putting them next to a window that will receive a draft um
during the fall months. Also, want to make sure that the plant that you are transitioning from outside where was it sitting. Was it in the sun getting direct sunlight? If so, you want to slowly transition it into areas that are a little bit darker or have more shade. Tip number two actress self. Is this plant healthy enough to live inside? If it's yellowing outside or wilting because it's dying or it's too hot, you may not want
to bring a struggling plant indoors. Tip number three inspect your plant for pests anywhere from gnats to spiders to worms and caterpillars, and so it's important to thoroughly get in there. You may have to use a magnifying glass, but you want to look at those leaves up and down. You could risk those healthier plants being infected as well. Step four determined if repotting is necessary your plant may have grown significantly outside, so it may be time to repot.
Tip number five, which is just as important as the other tips. Give the plant time to acclimate to your indoor space. So this plant was living outside. It may have been receiving rain periodically, the sun beaming on it, or you want to give it time before you begin to put it on new watering schedule. When it's in your house, just leave it alone for a few days, watch it, make sure that it is still healthy before
you pick it back up on a new schedule. Now that it's in your home, all right, everyone, I am Jade the Black Plant Chicken plant care Consultant, and you just heard my five tips for transitioning your outdoor plants inside for the fall. Until next time, love, peace, and propagate. It is so fun to be able to pick up the phone and just call up experts like Jade and Vivian.
In fact, hearing Vivian talk about pickling and the ease of growing radishes and how she and her kids move her orchids around like this activity, it got me excited to hang out with my assistant gardner. I'm not in assisting on the cold garden it, so we headed out to our backyard, put some seeds in and maybe add a little bit of water. Yeah, and then let's uh, let's cover this up. Curious. Do you know what we're planning today is? Yeah, I've got a great story about radishes.
You want to hear it. So Dr Seuss actually used to plant radishes in his pipe so that it would stop him from smoking. And anytime he felt like he wanted to smoke, he would water it with a little eye dropper, and so you'd have tiny radish plants growing out of his pipe. Isn't that funny? But do you like eating radishes? M hm? Not like yeah, I think it'll be fun to have. The only thing I like is pickle radishes. Well we should. We can definitely pickle him.
This chef I was talking to Vivian. She was telling me that one of the fun things about radishes that they come up pretty soon. It only takes three weeks for them to come up. And my other friend, bar Tender was telling me that when he was a kid, the first thing he he put in his garden was radishes. Oh you're gonna take some big shovel. Now, do you think with everything we're doing here that all the other gardens are gonna get jealous because this is gonna be
such an awesome garden. Nope, every different gardens, different things that yeah, like we garden vanishes. The play was a lot ago, dawas and actually they also garden delicious juicy tomatoes. Well, how long do you think it will take before these things sprout out groups? Mhm, and you're gonna be counting. Nope. Years ago I read this thing from this legendary editor,
Peter Kaplan. He said, if you're struggling with writer's block, which I often do, just write a bunch of beginnings, and when you've got a dozen of them on the page, maybe you can string them together, or maybe you can step back and admire all these beautiful starts and think, isn't that a wonderful thing? I think about his advice a lot. People like to talk about the fall like the years closing up shop, and there is truth there. The days are shorter, light is getting scarce. But I
realized now fall can be about beginnings too. It's a good time to let trees take root. And it doesn't have to be outdoors either, you know, Jade showed us there are always things spring inside. Today I'm surrounded by beginnings. I have a little patch of radishes and don't tell Ruby, but I don't really high hopes for them. We're starting a little herb garden by the window, and their prospect
seems a little better. There are houseplants all over the living room now, and it's so joyous and so much greener, and I love that the whole family can delight in that. And then there's this little chaos garden I'm starting for myself. Really, have you heard about chaos gardens? Basically, you gather all your old seeds, leftovers from old packets, and you toss them into a pot of soil, and then you water them,
and then you just wait. And the truth is a chaos garden feels like a metaphor for life right now. Between virtual schooling and work, trying to keep up with parents and friends, and also just figuring out dinner, I
feel like I can't keep up. But in all this chaos, I like that I can scatter a few disparate seeds and do it just for the fun of it, and that sometime in the future I'll have this weird surprise to look forward to, because no matter what shoots up whether it's lettuce or a flower or some unexpected herb that wins this ridiculous racist sprout. I know it'll make me smile because it's another nice beginning. That's it for
today's episode. Don't forget whether you're a beginner like me, a pro trying something new, or someone in between enjoying your community garden. There are incredible resources waiting for you on the Miracle Grow website. Just visit Miracle grow dot com. That's Miracle g r o dot com, or click on the link in our show notes. Next time on our show, we'll dig into gardening in an urban environment, talking through how with a little elbow grease and a lot of determination,
we can still garden inside a studio apartment. If you like what you heard, don't forget to rate and review the show on Apple Podcast. It really helps us out, and we want to hear from you. What are your inspiring plant stories and relatable struggles and growing questions. Tag us in your post or tweet using the hashtag Humans Growing Stuff and you may just hear your story featured
on an upcoming episode. Humans Growing Stuff is a collaboration from I Heart Radio and your friends at Miracle Grow Our show was written and produced by Molly Sosha and me Mongy Chatiguler in partnership with Ryan Ovadia, Daniel Ainsworth, Hayley Erickson, and Garrett Shannon of Banter Until next Time, Thanks so much for listening.